Dell: Revenge Of The It Nerds - Dell Take It Easy [video]

Credits & Description:

Client: Dell
Product: It Solutions
Entrant: Mediacom Düsseldorf, Germany
Title: Revenge Of The It Nerds - Dell Take It Easy
Product/Service: It Solutions
Advertising Agency: Mediacom Beyond Advertising Dusseldorf, Germany
Media Agency: Mediacom Düsseldorf, Germany
Entrant Company: Mediacom Düsseldorf, Germany
Media Account Director: Marc Wülfken (Mediacom Agentur Für Media-beratung Gmbh)
Director Content Strategy: Matthias Hoeppner (Mediacom Beyond Advertising)
Creative Director: Georgios Engels (Mediacom Beyond Advertising)
Netpress
Marketing Director/End Dustomer Marketing: Georg Zedlacher (Dell Germany)
Brief Explanation
We needed to get Dell’s corporate IT solutions on the consideration list for Germany’s IT Decision Makers (ITDMs), with specific objective of obtaining 1
000 leads with this hard-to-convince B2B audience. However, to do so, we needed to overcome long-held prejudices that Dell was just a bunch of Americans who sell value laptops. So, Dell wasn’t trusted in Germany. It needed to form a better, special relationship with its decision makers.
Results and Effectiveness
In just four months we grew a community of more than 213,000 IT people, with 20% of them returning regularly. The sitcom was a massive success with over 1.5m video views. The first episode was the most successful Facebook post in the whole IT category ever (120,000 organic views, 3,000 shares and over 1,000 comments in one week). More than 650 DAU-experiences and 220 memes have been created, while earned media was valued at 32% of the total budget. We exceeded regular buzz about Dell B2B by 1,288%, and 76% comments are positive compared to an industry benchmark of 10%.
Creative Execution
We created a 16-webisode sitcom, promoted via Germany’s biggest IT websites, Facebook video ads and blogger outreach, telling our target’s day-to-day stories. All our messages were designed to lead to Dell’s new Tumblr page where IT Administrators could contribute their stories of the “Dumbest Assumable User” in their companies, and use our bespoke DAU generator to turn their stories into shareable gifs. Finally, we linked our Tumblr site to Dell’s business website where we ran interviews with IT Administrators. These interviews with deep insights from our target are used for the next chapter of “Tough Enough”.
Insights, Strategy and the Idea
We discovered that ITDMs relied on an informal network of colleagues to advise them. The critical link in the chain was Dell’s reputation among IT Administrators. We realized that IT Administrators were all too often surrounded, exasperated and frustrated by computer illiterates. Thus, they needed space to let off steam. Demonstrating that we understood their pain would enable us to build a better relationship and start to put Dell on their decision journey. Our message was “Life is Tough Enough, Take IT easy”. We’d let them talk to other IT Administrators in a way only fellow IT geeks would understand.